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Wembley Stadium
Photo: JUSTIN TALLIS / Pool via REUTERS
What was this European Football Championship?
That has probably never been so difficult to answer as it was at this tournament.
Otherwise it is quite easy to draw a sporting balance sheet, to look for possible football trends.
This EM was different.
Too many things have overlapped and the sporty found it difficult to take the lead.
To have a look at it first: Italy and England are in the final, some with a lot of emotion and enthusiasm, the others more relaxed and certainly also benefiting from the home advantage.
There is a lot to suggest that it can be a good final, there are two teams that were not lucky or a good draw made it into the final.
Two who were favorites from the start of the tournament have prevailed.
This EM - even in retrospect, a crazy idea
Others, which one would have expected further up front, failed surprisingly early, especially world champions France.
Joachim Löw's eleven had set themselves high goals, and the team was only able to meet the demands to a limited extent.
The end in the second round was logical.
The excitement about the early German failure was limited.
There are other issues at this European Championship that have been preoccupying the people, and from that you can gauge how much football has changed and how football has changed with it.
To host an EM in a pandemic, to play the decisive matches in London in a filled Wembley stadium, where the Delta variant is raging, the numbers of infected fans after visiting the game in Saint Petersburg - the tournament is the subject of Corona, as was to be expected, not got rid of it.
Sticking to the plan of entrusting eleven different countries with the event in Corona times of all things was a crazy idea even in retrospect.
You don't have to be an alarmist or polemicist to say: This EM put people in health danger.
Because Uefa wanted it that way.
Heart gesture as one of the pictures of the tournament
In other respects too, topics that had little to do with the chain of three and the switching game got to the fore.
The big debate about illuminating the arena in rainbow colors before the Hungarians game in Munich overshadowed football for days.
In the end it was a good debate, because it was only after Uefa refused to approve the request of the Munich City Council that the discussion really spread.
Football has also compelled footballers to comment, Leon Goretzka's heart gesture after his goal put the icing on the cake.
The heart against the black block of the Hungarian Hools, one of the pictures of this tournament.
It was the best performance of a German footballer at this European Championship.
A Greenpeace glider that landed on the lawn in Munich before the France game and barely missed an accident, that will also be remembered.
It was an almost symbolic picture of how politics is looking for its way onto the football field.
The playing field is no longer a place just for the footballers.
If that was ever the case.
Above all, however, it was the dramatic events surrounding Christian Eriksen, his cardiac arrest on the pitch in the game against Finland on the second day of the European Championship that shaped this tournament.
Fortunately, it turned out all right in the end, but right from the start this European Championship was on the brink.
Had it turned out differently that afternoon: Nobody, possibly not even Uefa, would have imagined that the game would have continued afterwards.
However, the game continued on the same day in Copenhagen, something that really does not do the European federation any credit.
The events around Eriksen influenced the history of the Danish team, the way the team made it to the semi-finals, where Kaspar Hjulmand's eleven failed due to the English and a penalty whistle, the identification in the country with this eleven, the enthusiasm, the Denmark too caused by fans all over Europe, all of this is often interpreted as the power of football.
However, it is much more the power of the human.
But they too, and especially they, are good for football.
It was the bright spot of an EM that was everything.
Just not a purely sporting soccer tournament.
